pienso que frances (?!) es muy facil que espangol (is that the french or spanish way of spelling it!?) Me gusta espagnol (Sp) mucho, pero es dificil de escribir!

Je vais à l'université le samedi pour commencer le francais et la musique, mais J'ai essayé de lire un livre en francais et c'était plus difficile que les autres livres que J'ai lu?! Donc, il faut apprendre le <<grammaire>> vite, avant J'arrive à l'uni!

God that was hard! I've listened to french all holiday when I've stopped at my french friends. But it's not grammatically correct how they talk, and I haven't written any since May!

Espagnol is the French spelling but other than that it was good! What do you plan to do after univerisity elmo, if you don't mind me asking? It's just I would love to do something with Spanish only I'm not sure what's out there!

I'd like to teach, but I couldn't decide between music and french at the time! I thought about translating, but apparently there isn't much need for working with people, more written translating, and I would rather work with people than sit in an office looking at a computer! Now, I think I'd rather teach music, coz I liked the work experience more in the music dept than the french dept, but we'll see. I also really want to work in France!

Español? That's it isn't it?

Teach music in France then!

See I was thinking that....! lol! But I could never cope with the solfa stuff (well I could if I got used to it!) and it would be really weird standing at the front of a class talking about crotchets n stuff in french!

I know I can talk about other things, but I saw myself talking about those things when I was learning french. I never seriously thought that I would *need* music words in french otherwise I would've pestered my friend!

Teach French music

hehe

i'll practice! lol i haven't done french for 2 years though...and i was never any good at it anyway

I thought about translating too, and also interpreting. I think I would really enjoy interpreting but I researched it and it said that they are often a lot of periods when there is no work So now I don't know.
I wish I had done business studies and then I could have done it with Spanish and done interpreting in some big high flying business!

Be grateful you didn't. BS is the most boring subject in the world!

I second that! I took business at GCSE.

LOL... I've a friend who loved it and studied it at uni each to their own (I would be rubbish at it)

That's a shame, I've been thinking about becoming an interpreter!

Nothing could persuade me to do business, I don't have the right kind of mindset!

I think if you're a very very good interpreter then you wouldn't have a problem. You can work at the UN and EU and places like that, I imagine they use translators and interpreters all the time.

A lot of the linguists from my course went for interviews and tests at GCHQ.

What's GCHQ? Am very slow tonight!

UK Government Communications Headquarters
http://www.gchq.gov.uk/



Now THAT I can ALWAYS sympathise with...

I probably wouldn't know except that it's closeish to where I live.

Thanks! I'm really tired, haven't sat down at all today! School is so confusing!!!!

Hallo, vriendjes !

Etant Bruxellois, je suis (plus ou moins) bilingue: ma langue maternelle c'est le néerlandais, ma deuxième langue le français. Je pourrais vous enseigner en toutes les deux, vous aider à traduire, vous corriger...

English is my third language, actually.

Ich habe auch ein bischen Deutsch in der Schule gelernt. Deutsch ist eine schwierige sprache, aber das ist verwandt mit Niederländisch.

Ho estudiado un poco español tambien, pero ya ho mucho olbidado ! No so bastante para viajar en España.

Mi piace parlare e udire l'italiano ! E una lingua molto cantabile. Inoltre l'ortografia è molto logica !

Jag har ocksa° lärt litet svenska ! Det älskar jag mycket ! Alla nordiska Spra°k är liksom, utom finska, men det känner jag inte !

Ace! The only bit I didn't understand was the dutch(?) at the end!

Auch, habe Ich Deutch gelernt. Die Stunden waren langweilig aber Ich liebe Deutsch sprechen! Wenn ich nicht über Atomkraftwerken und Politike sprechen müssen

How comes you can speak so many languages well?! I wish I was bilingual...It would be cool! My friend doesn't even know what language she's thinking in sometimes!

Wow you know a lot of languages! I'm impressed and slightly envious...

I wish there was more emphasis on languages here in primary school. That way we'd all be like another crazy pianist!

But too many people here have the attitude "the whole world can speak english, why learn something we don't have to?"

it's silly isn't it. people'd find them way easier if they'd been doing them since age 8, too!

That's exactly your problem, and I think it's a normal, or at least understandable attitude. With your language, you can indeed go anywhere in the world and will always be able to make yourself clear.

We, Dutch speaking people, represent a population of about 25 million individuals (Netherlands & 60% of Belgium) and therefore we have a low opinion of our language, so we are very docile towards our neighbour countries' languages: English, French and German. Half of the time at school is spent to language study. But most people in Flanders and the Netherlands speak (besides Dutch) only English and French.

Not all Belgians speak seven languages, of course ! Learning languages happens to be one of my personal interests, but, Jeeeeezuss, it takes soooo much time !!!

Only the first line was Dutch : "Hallo vriendjes" means: "Hello (little) friends". Dutch is one of the so-called "West-Germanic" languages, that include also English and German.
My favourite language is Swedish (last line: svenska !!). This is a "North-Germanic" language. Very interesting: you recognize many English words in it (remember the English history: England has been invaded by the Vikings!)
Words like "much", "knife", "small", "little", "first", "answer" (and many other!) are adopted from the old Norse (in modern Swedish: "mycket", "kniv", "sma°", "liten", "först", "ansvar".

Advice: if you want to learn Spanish as well as Italian, be aware that these two languages are quite confusing. (Same applies to Dutch and German, as I am told ) Therefore: study both at the same time! This will be tough at the beginning, but at least you will learn to distinguish the one from the other.

It's sort of a shame how many schools in the U.K. don't have the facilities to teach a wide variety of languages - our school only does French and German. If you are in a bilingual country, chances are, you can learn as many languages as you want; at least you can start with the advantage of extra languages without actually having to set out to learn them - one of my sister's friends speaks 9 languages in total - 6 of which she was born with. Born in Switzerland, she had French, German, Italian and Swiss-German (sort of counts). Then, her two parents both spoke two different languages too - two more languages to the collection. Goes to school to study two languages: another two. Finally, learns one as a hobby, making the ninth language!

~Wobby~

Is she fluent in all of them?

Which languages do her parents speak?

I'm envious!

bon nuit a tous

Lol, yup, fluent in almost every one of them, being born with the first 6. Not so sure about the ninth though. I think one of her parents spoke Spanish, and the other Arabic. The hobby language was Japanese. So basically, she has about 80% of the world covered!

~Wobby~

Ace! I'd love that!

and if they don't understand - you just shout a bit louder??

I agree that schools could do much more to promote a wider range of languages. My son went to a bilingual school between the ages of 5 and 10, and he has retained quite a lot of his second language. I reckon most schools in this country start languages too late.

I'm really envious too of anyone who can speak several languages well.

Me too!

Maggiemay: you're right, we leave it far too late. What was the second language in your son's school?

I can speak Russian pretty well but that's it, and even there I've lost a lot of fluency dribs and drabs of other languages but nothing like being fluent.

So you speak English, French and Russian, that makes three languages ! Not bad at all ! Many people just know one language.
I'm always taking pride in "knowing" 7 languages, but I have only a basic knowledge of 4 of them. It's quite easy to obtain the basics of a language: it's amusing and you make a good progress, but the further you get, the tougher it becomes to improve. There are still 2000 languages spoken in the world, so let's give up the diligence to learn them all...
P.S.: But I would be pleased to teach you a little Dutch !

No, my French is terrible! Truly - I could get by on holiday and I can understand/read more than I can write/say, but it's pretty bad especially considering I studied it for 8 years The only one besides English that I could call myself qualified and able (or formerly able - it's so rusty!) in is Russian. I do know bits and pieces of several other languages, collect languages and alphabets like some people collect stamps...


Definitely.


Not today, but I may just take you up on that!